TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Lion fish

I saw this article and thought some might be interested.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/02/16/fight-against-lionfish/23504661/

There was a man who got on Shark Tank in the last year, trying to show everyone the way to get out of the lion fish infestation was to eat their way out. None of the Shark Tank investors took him on, but I sure thought the presentation was a good one.

Need to work up a way to serve them up like chicken wings. A couple of Super Bowls and they would be near extinct!
BobandJeana

Had some Lionfish last week....here in Anguilla several restaurants serving them.....had mine in a light vodka batter....a really mild light fish.....would not hesitate in having it again....kate <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/canada.gif" alt="" />

As a scuba diver, I have speared and eaten many lionfish but not in St. Martin. The Nature Foundation is recommending that the invasive lionfish not be eaten or consumed based on a recently concluded study where flesh samples which were taken of larger lionfish caught in St. Maarten waters showed levels of the poisonous ciguatoxin which causes Ciguatera poisoning.

Over the last few years, I have speared many lionfish in St. Martin but left them for the sharks.

Please read this article before consuming lionfish in St. Martin.

http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=93756482100

Lionfish on the Fuh Sheng

http://vid620.photobucket.com/albums/tt288/babar508/Short%20Spearfishing.mp4

Thanks for posting that.....me tinks I will pass on the lionfish......kate <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/canada.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for spearing those lionfish, hope the sharks are the ones eating them and they suffer no ill effects.

They do feed them to the sharks. Only downside to that is that the sharks get used to the divers spearing the lionfish and follow and interact with them for the food. Could cause them to be aggressive during the spearing.

Off topic from lion fish, but do you scuba people see a lot of sharks in SXM water? I assume they are there, but we don't hear much about it.

Yes. Just about every dive I took last year we had sharks around us. They were Grey Reef and Nurse sharks. On one occasion we had what the dive master identified was a Lemon Shark circling us on our 15' 3 min safety stop. I have heard there are Tiger Sharks in the Anguilla Channel and also of Tintimari but have never seen any.

I see sharks on just about every dive, especially when spearing lionfish. From the time I shot that lionfish in the posted video until I had five sharks circling me was 90 seconds. Does not take them long. Will post link if anybody wants to see it.

Would love to see it!

I also would love to see the video link. Are shark species the only underwater creature to eat the lion fish after they are speared?

A lot of other fish will eat them after they are speared but will not eat them while alive.

Here is the link to the five shark that came in 90 seconds after spearing the first lionfish.

http://vid620.photobucket.com/albums/tt288/babar508/Circling%20Sharks.mp4

I have seen video on Youtube of barracuda doing the same thing. It was actually a group introducing Lionfish to Barracuda as a food source hoping ot get them to eat them on their own. Sadly I have seen too much video showing Lionfish adapting to every environment even down to 600 feet or more, they are just little vacuum cleaners killing everything in their path.

That was cool to watch, played it three times. The sharks sure look like they were playing nice getting to eat their supper.

Sometimes I wonder if the fish we grew up eating will be no more in another decade, or less.

Was that your dive computer beeping?

Yes.

What dive company did you dive with?

In the Key West area of Florida there is a contest currently running inviting both chefs and home cooks to come with new and innovative ways to cook lionfish.
There appears to be a lot of interest but I read nothing about any dangers of eating lionfish. Hopefully we'll eat lionfish into extinction thus saving reef populations. Now if only we could stop humans from destroying the fragile reefs....